Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Podcast 14 - Social Media and Relationshipd
0 Playsin 14 hours
Come join us as we discuss some of the impacts social media has on our relationships.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Recap
00:00:10
Speaker
Hey, welcome back to the Grove Hill Podcast. Glad to have you joining us today. If it's your first time, we're especially glad you're you're listening in. Hopefully you will share this with others and find it worth your while for just a few minutes for listening to these three you guys talk and what
Social Media and Modern Isolation
00:00:23
Speaker
we have to say. Last week we picked up an important subject, one that stays in the front of news a lot in our culture today, social media and the impact, the effects of social media.
00:00:33
Speaker
both positive and negative. We're going to take some opportunities to share some positive things, hopefully, if we find them. I think Yeah, later on. Sprinkle them in. ah But we do want to continue this conversation today and kind of want to start off with ah the the idea, the concept that we are the most connected culture in the history of the world, and yet we are lonely, we're isolated.
00:00:57
Speaker
Many times we feel like we're alone and facing the challenges we have. um Speak to that just a little bit for me and how it's beginning to impact our relationships relationships are the core of our being When the Bible says we are made in the image of God I believe in part that means that we desire and thrive in relationship Just as God did and does between Father Son and Holy Spirit So we have that element of us God created us for community. So what is social media doing to hurt our relationships? Yeah, I mentioned this last week in that a student in the middle of 85 students raised their hand and said, I'm surrounded by people, but I feel lonely. That was about six months ago, and I was noticing a pattern of the students coming in at the beginning of youth group, and they would have their phones in their hands. They'd be playing their little games that they had going on, and then they're experiencing loneliness. And so it's just it's just like a sign. We don't allow that anymore. Once they come in the door, their phones are in their pocket and put away for the evening. That's good. but
00:01:54
Speaker
It's just that. it's It's being on our phones, not engaging in personal conversation with people in the 15 minutes they had before youth group. They could be having a personal conversation with someone and yet choosing to go to the phone. And I use the students as the example, but I'm also talking about us adults. and You see any classroom or any Bible study before it starts, everybody's got their phone in their hand.
00:02:16
Speaker
And then when it starts, we we sometimes put it away. so Yeah. And I know many times the response people, when you talk about this, they kind of go, oh, I don't ever ignore people from my phone. i I'm always engaged with them. But I think if you go, yeah, first of all, think that's not true. But if you go back one step, I think a lot of people never even make it to the conversation because they are so sidetracked by their phone, their their devices. um I was joking with y'all earlier a few weeks ago, standing watching during one of our prayer times at church, a A lady probably in her 40s has a watch during the prayer time. She's responding to a text on her watch. And I thought, you're missing a dialogue that Jesus wants to have with you right now and and ah in this moment because you're more concerned about what's happening on your phone. What's higher. You may not even be on the phone, but the phone in the pocket and you're having a conversation with someone and it's buzzing or going off in text messages, that's where your brain's going. Your brain's connected to that rather than to the person standing in front of you. yeah You can say that you're removed from it.
Addiction and Distraction Concerns
00:03:15
Speaker
The phone physically does something to your body. Because I've had my phone away from my body. I mean, it's you know across the room. And you feel the buzz. Yes. yeah I mean, your physical body, it is used to that, have that trigger of those things. Whenever you get connected, I don't know the the specifics of the radiation that gets through your body, all that. But I know that there's a a trigger that gets attributed to the physical things that you react to. And it's like your body craves that. And we just, we're not as far removed as we think we are of being dependent on that thing. It's an addiction. Yes. Oh, yeah. They did a study in the same signs that you take away someone's phone from them and they reach for their pocket. It's the same sign that you when you take drugs away from a person, they reach for that. Oh, wow. They have it. And so and it's it's an addiction and it's a it's a habit of reaching for something. And just because it's not a drug doesn't mean it's not damaging us. To your point, Ridley, I have seen this and talking about people on their phone in their cars. And it kind of rubs in line with the analogy you're talking about. We feel like we're connected. Oh, yeah, I heard this person. i totally get it. But we don't notice how much we miss until we actually see the stats rolled out. people miss probably a hundred feet of the road in a matter of seconds so absolutely and whatever is out there because a quick two second glance down at their phone when they're going 70 miles an hour and you're like, you're missing a lot. Sometimes the really important stuff and then your life changes yeah because you're,
00:04:47
Speaker
but So it's it's dangerous to be doing that for two reasons. Not only are you missing out on the road as you drive, yeah but you're you're just missing out on what could be going on in the car or in the things around you. um I'll tell you, I'm very guilty. When I am in the middle of a conversation or something on like reading an article or something, my wife will come in and start talking. I can tell you and swear to you, I hear what she says.
00:05:11
Speaker
but I don't listen. See, i can't. I don't hear what she says. i'm better than you are. No, I'm just kidding. Well, I mean, that's true. I mean, for most of time, you can't. But I mean, I can hear her. I can even pick out some major details of the conversations I'm following her, but she'll come back to me and go, did you do that? And I'm like, well, didn't hear you say that part.
00:05:29
Speaker
You know? yeah Well, truth is because I really wasn't listening at all. So talk to me about this, John. Family dynamics. What's it doing between parents and kids, what we're going through in these these days of social media in our culture? um We say it's connecting. that And there's this theme of connecting but having no signal going through. you know We can say we're plugged in. We have probably more awareness of where our kids are at now than we ever have. Like all these tracking apps. I think it's hilarious hearing all these families like, oh, yeah, I see my kids over at their third period class.
00:06:06
Speaker
They're in aisle three, aisle three of Brooks. it's like Give me a break. But I think it's disconnecting families. Mm-hmm. we've made it a point to not have TVs in our kids' room.
00:06:18
Speaker
good The last house, I did have that. you know Just be straight up. We had that cause I'm like, man, I've got to have the football game on in this room. yeah just But it led to disconnection. same thing with phones. If we have so much phone screen time, we find disconnected family
Teenagers and Secretive Social Media Use
00:06:35
Speaker
time. And when you're sitting around the table, you're having the conversation of, Hey, how is the relationship with you and other kids at school? Or how's the relationship, you know, if you're in another setting, ah how's the social relationship of them being just educated on how to communicate with other people? right
00:06:52
Speaker
So I think for the family itself, it's created a lot of obstacles of just cognitive growth. Because People don't even know how to talk to other people or look them in the eye because they're looking at their phone. Which brings up a great point.
00:07:07
Speaker
You see this probably more than anybody because the age group you work with, we're seeing it more and more even smaller kids, but teenagers who don't know how to look you in the eye and have a conversation. Right. Because they've never been challenged to do that. Yeah, it's damaging because the best thing you could do for your kid is encourage to encourage them to have those face-to-face conversations with people. Make them order themselves at the restaurant.
00:07:29
Speaker
Make them look the waitress in the eye. Yes. Things like that. Tell them to go thank a veteran. Set up ways for them to engage with people. But yes, the phone is absolutely disconnecting from that. You're seeing a huge culture of of kids who do not know how to have a conversation. Right. Yeah. And while that's a more widespread problem, I think a more intense problem is kids who have secret lives that are going on on social media their parents have no clue about. Yes.
00:07:56
Speaker
Everything from questioning their identities to... uh dogging out their mom and dad because of choices they're making uh these fantasy worlds they build on these games one of the biggest things we see is they'll have their main instagram account yeah and they'll have a second instagram account so if mom and dad are engaged and looking at their instagram account they'll have a secondary under another name another alias to disconnect and go deeper without being tracked by mom and dad so
00:08:27
Speaker
lot of scary things. um I call it backdoor communication. any Any app form of communication that is disconnected from texting has just this... elusive darkness about it to where you feel like you can engage in conversations you normally wouldn't in a darker light. And so it's just interesting to see scaring that happen. I remember talking with some parents of youth at my former church. We were having a conversation, and I mentioned, don't remember what the particular app was, that they had been talking on this app, and the parent gave me this stunned look, and I said, what is And they said,
00:09:02
Speaker
You mean they can talk to each other on that app? And I was like, oh, yeah. She said, I just thought it was Facebook and text. And at that point, and Instagram, you know, TikTok, I don't think was a a big thing yet. And I was like, no. I mean, like just about every app has some form of messaging or communication or something. She goes, how are you supposed to keep up?
00:09:22
Speaker
Yep. How are you supposed to keep up? And the whole idea is you're not. ye You know, when when ah when the producers, the creators of these apps put those things in, they do it on purpose because in capturing your kid, they've captured a client for the rest of their life. They're not out to protect the family. they're out to look for your kids.
False Connections and Online Misunderstandings
00:09:39
Speaker
they're They're out to create money, dollars that are driven by lifelong clients for their stuff. yeah They create susceptibility to your point for consumership. Like how can we make you buy this? Because think about it. It's not just Instagram. It's the people that are buying the ad space for Instagram. Um, And then, hey, if I can can create consumership, well, they're going to keep buying ads on my platform. And then your kids are going to keep going on this platform to suck it in, to suck the the viewership. And then we create these idols out of, man, I got...
00:10:14
Speaker
And we do it as adults. Yeah. Hey, I got 50 likes. I got 100 likes. Right. Oh, did you see? they Yeah, they didn't get as many likes. It becomes so simplistic, but we find ourselves doing it because we've been sucked. I mean, I'm almost 20 years in on Facebook, and I'm thinking...
00:10:30
Speaker
Golly, it's a scary thing. yeah Tell me what we're what we're losing in our friendships today because of social media. I think one of the one of the big areas that looms very large is the comparison that goes on nowadays that we didn't used to have to be involved in because we didn't know everything that was going on behind your closed doors. Yeah.
00:10:49
Speaker
ah Yeah, back to the connection part. There's a difference between sitting physically with someone and having a conversation. And if you don't believe me, you could talk on the phone with someone long distance for two hours a day. But when you see them and reunited with them in person, it's like this huge reunion, right? And so there's a difference in being together with people. And a lot of people think that connections with friends is just through this engage over text or social media.
00:11:17
Speaker
um when that's not providing any connection at all other than information. And so um hang out with people, get involved with with young adults, get get engaged with a church in your area to have that physical connection with people. I think we've lost intentionality because it's as easy as it is to pull out the phone.
00:11:37
Speaker
We look at that and we're like oh, we're connected with them. But there's a lot of difference. I see this in my relationships. I i see this in the way that I communicate with maybe those that are over my overseeing my kids' day-to-day walk as they are in education. The best communication, i can talk to that teacher that sees my kid and there may be an issue here there.
00:12:00
Speaker
I can talk to them over a text, but man, I get a better gauge of how my kid's doing. If I go to a parent teacher conference and I i get a hold of how they're feeling about where my kid's at or in the friendship relationship, man, rubbing shoulders with people and getting to talk with them, you, you notice the difference in emotion, tone, all those things. It's just different. Yeah. Something that happens, a phenomenon that happens on social media is that things are magnified or amplified more so than if you, again, face-to-face or even participate in particular event. I just was reading upstairs an article. um this generation Somebody from Generation X was talking about this generation has faced more than any other generation we've gone through. covid we went through 9 11 we went through all those things and on the surface that sounds bad and it is i mean no nobody's going take anything away from them but the truth is the generation before them went through world war ii and vietnam and the cold war and the generation before that went through world war one and the spanish flu where 50 million people were killed by a virus before that it was the civil war i mean every generation has its problems the difference if
00:13:10
Speaker
if a If a truck pulls in front of a building and blows it up as a terrorist act, we don't just hear the report on the news. We now see it replayed over and over and over. And so-called experts now pick it apart and slow it in 30 different angles and slow down the information. It's like everything is magnified. And that plays all the way down to our personal relationships. Yeah.
00:13:36
Speaker
You know, um i send a message to John, John forwards it to Kyle, Kyle doesn't know what the conversation's about. He picks up on a particular word. Now he's magnifying his head to be worse than it is. um And that's why one of the things we talk about on our staff is be careful. Text is not always appropriate for what you're doing. yeah right Instagram's not always the appropriate place to play things out.
00:13:57
Speaker
There's a place and a reason, a call for us to be face-to-face, flesh-to-flesh with other human beings. Yeah, if you're saying in your head, oh man, this is going to be a hard conversation with this person, it should not be an email or a text message. no. It needs to be in person, heart-to-heart, so they can hear your emotions, hear your heart. Otherwise, it just gets lost in translation because they can read it. If the tensions are already high, they can read it however they see fit. Absolutely.
00:14:20
Speaker
i see I think we see the value of a person too, when we're sitting next to them, you know, you don't see as much value. I think sometimes when you remove yourself from people, because we've, you know, the, the title keyboard wars or, you know, keyboard warriors, you have these people that disconnect themselves. We're, we're,
00:14:38
Speaker
God's placed ah an importance on a physical being and yeah you see in that person face to face. It makes it a little bit harder, even when you're mad at them, you may be even justified to have, you know, just super ill thoughts towards them because you see a person that is living and breathing. Right across from you. And maybe they need some grace. Yeah. you know All three of us have been involved in those situations where somebody will come on some social media with texting or or X or whatever, and they'll say something that you know they would not say to you face to face. 100%. And then you follow up with that phone call. When you sit down with them it's a it's a like like brought down a thousand
Impact on Romantic Relationships
00:15:17
Speaker
degrees. Like a different person. It's a different person. You know, it's that anonymity behind the keyboard that causes us to act in ways that really aren't human sometimes, the way we treat each other.
00:15:26
Speaker
ah Let's bring this into a little bit more personal, intimate area. Let's talk about what social media is doing to our marriages. Killing them. Killing them. Killing them. killing them it' so That's a pretty adequate term right there. um Talk about some of the ways you see.
00:15:39
Speaker
Yeah, so my wife and I, a few weeks ago, stressed out, long days, long weeks, and we were both laying in bed and we were both on our phone. And she leaned over and she goes, man, we've been missing time together and here we are both scrolling, right? And so it replaces the necessary conversations. It replaces the necessary intimacy and it's exchanged for nothing.
00:16:01
Speaker
there's nothing There's nothing that's feeding. It's actually causing more stress, more anxiety in my life. But the day's hard, the day's stressful. Her day's hard, her day's stressful. And so you look for something to bring some type of peace or dopamine or endorphins. yeah And you sit there and scroll and it's empty. It's providing nothing. And so just...
00:16:23
Speaker
Simple things like that, a host of other things that contributed to the damaging of marriages. And I'm sure we're going to talk about few of them today, but yeah, just the disconnection. Yeah. One thing that always comes to my mind is the way it destroys again, our, our intimacy with one another and what we do to resolve those issues. In the past, where a husband and a wife maybe weren't connecting and weren't really on the same page, it was a little bit more of motivation to go back to that spouse and say, we need to sit down and talk. Things aren't good. Now it's easier pick up the phone and carry on a relationship with somebody else around the world she didn't even know. So it's an escape for us. The other issue, the really big issue that looms out there is the issue of pornography, of reconnecting with old boyfriends and girlfriends, carrying on emotional affairs. Even if you never get to the physical part, the emotional side of it is just as damaging as actually crawling in bed with somebody else. So John, speak to some of that a little bit. I mean, this is a huge challenge because there's such anonymity with this. Oh, yeah.
00:17:25
Speaker
We convince ourselves we're we're the exception to the rule. So, you know, and let's just be super honest. The progression of, you know, pornography has always been available throughout the entire mankind. It didn't just happen whenever magazines came on the scene. This is.
00:17:41
Speaker
from the very beginning, I mean, we even see the root words of it in scripture, pornea, where it's mentioned this ah sexual struggle that we as humanity have struggled with is there.
00:17:53
Speaker
ah We have to realize that it's not, the caretaker, it's not the best place, the caretaker of our emotions, the caretaker of our emotions should be the designated space for our spouse. Yes. Or ah the designated space to where God should come in. That's the caretaker. That's the caregiver of that. But we want to take this like quick fix, like quick back scratch and, Hey, that's all right. I can delete the browsing history. I mean, and I say that and my heart's broken because I walked through that. like Yeah. I walked through ah struggles with pornography before, and man, it will wreck your life. Absolutely. It will wreck. and And here's the other thing. Even if you have the grace that's been given to you by God, and he starts to remove those things because of accountability of brothers and sisters in Christ, because of the Spirit changing your desires, um it's still the... the
00:18:49
Speaker
the scarring of sin, man, it can still be present and those things can still arise. So I don't think we really grasp the the power of it desiring to be our caretaker, the the sexual things, the other things that the phone provides us. And we are we like to downplay it because we're like, oh, it's not it's not... in real life it's not a physical thing yeah and we downplay even images and I want to read Ephesians 5 verse 3 it says ah but among you there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality or any kind of impurity and so just because it's Instagram Facebook or YouTube doesn't mean that it's not pornography right and so there's plenty of images there's plenty of of
00:19:32
Speaker
purposely placed things in your ads. Um, uh, when I had Instagram or Facebook, I would see something and instantly turn it to my wife. So I wasn't hiding anything because it was like, look, which just came across my thing. Right. And it's so if your students are on any type of social media, they are seeing things that they should not be seeing things that aren't beneficial to them now or beneficial to their marriage in
Parental Guidance and Relationship Transparency
00:19:55
Speaker
the future. So it's something to be extremely guarded over. Yeah.
00:20:00
Speaker
we'll We'll, as we're finishing up the series over the next two, three, seven weeks, we decide to be on this thing. We're going to try to offer some tips along the way, but here's a place where I just have to stop and insert this. If you are a married man or woman and you have social media, at the very least, your spouse should have every password and have permission to check whenever they want to, whatever's going on in your social media without question. Right. No exceptions. If your wife wakes in the middle the night, 3 o'clock, says, hey, I need to see your phone, then need to be the you need a hand it to her. And a lot of people will say, oh, I trust my spouse or I trust this. but If you think that you're above and that you're out of it, then Satan's got you right where he wants you. Exactly. The second that you say, oh, I would never do that, then Satan's going, whoop, I got my way in, right? Because I'm going to put that right in front of you and allow you the space and time to make that poor decision. Yeah. I mean, for me, i never, ever went out looking for those things. They just came to me. Right. I mean, yeah I'd flip on the the Facebook to just check and you know, what one of my church members saying that's stupid today or whatever, you know, and two or three things in and there's a picture of a half-dressed woman. Yes. Thank God it was never really truly like full-blown pornography, but I knew what was next. Oh, for sure. And so like you said, I would show it to my wife. But after a while, several weeks ago, I've talked about it. I just i was like, this this is this is monotonous. It's crazy. It's insane. You know, definition of being insane is you keep doing the same thing the same way, expect different results. So I finally just asked myself,
00:21:33
Speaker
Why do I keep inviting the enemy into my house? Why do I keep allowing him to do that? So I just had to get away from it. I did. i'm I'm missing out on some great stuff. I know. But I just let my wife show me pictures of our great kids and things of that nature. But yeah it is it's that important, guys. It's that important that you don't allow. and And by the way, I think we said this last week.
00:21:54
Speaker
If your kid is being handed your cell phone at the restaurant to entertain themselves, they've seen pornography too, whether you want to admit it or not. And I'm not talking necessarily guy and the girl in the bed, and you know, having sexual intercourse, but there's a half-dressed girl waiting at the end of that thing for your children. sure.
00:22:09
Speaker
I was showing my son a YouTube video, an ad popped up right in the middle. yep And you're just like, what are we doing? yeah over I'm the one who just exposed my kid yeah to something inappropriate. Yeah, and I mentioned it a couple weeks ago, over 80% of America...
00:22:24
Speaker
We're talking hundreds of millions of people, even those that probably just got their first smartphone because Grandma Susie over here is needing some way to communicate with you know their daughter.
00:22:35
Speaker
Everybody has it, and everybody is looking at it like, oh, you know harmless, but without intention. Sometimes those things hit us. yeah And so we we just got to be careful. And man, it's it's hard. So we hear a lot about the word algorithms. And for those who don't know, let me just explain what the algorithm does. I don't know the technical explanation. I just know this. Algorithm sees Ridley come on and follow his Georgia Bulldogs, read a couple of golf articles, um some fishing stuff. And all of a sudden that algorithm then goes, we're we're talking about a man. Yeah. And based on the articles he's reading, he's probably a middle-aged man because he's reading about guys like Michael Jordan instead of LeBron the fake James. And so he's a different kind of guy, you know. So we're going to cater him. We're going to throw him some 40 and 50-year-old women out there. And and that it's such a genius thing that it's connecting the dots for you. That's why you can sit there and have a conversation with your wife over dinner about some restaurant town. the next thing you know, there's an ad popping up for that at yeah that thing. So...
00:23:35
Speaker
you are You are incapable of defeating it by yourself. Correct, yep. And you're not gonna be the exception to the rule. In fact, this is probably something pretty weird to admit, but um when i started the story when I started the Student Life Instagram page, I registered it as a girl um And I've had no issue. i have no issue on the Instagram page with inappropriate but things being set because it said that it's a girl, right? It's a business account, but it put that it was a female run. And so it's actually protected me from other things. And so it's interesting to see that it is targeting the gender. It is targeting the sex drive. so Instead, but it's probably showing you as fashion all those other things. Things you don't give a rip about.
00:24:19
Speaker
yeah And I would say my view has changed on this a little bit in the last probably just year that what you said, I think it was last week that there are things that are moral, immoral and amoral. ah Moral being, you know, there there's an innate good, you know, to that immoral being innately bad. And then AIM World, you know, it could be neither. I used to play social media in that middle ground, but it's not. it's the And I think the algorithm, their whole drive between their platforms and then probably their board meetings and all these things is we are driving you to a location.
00:24:58
Speaker
And it's not connectedness between people, which is what I think maybe, you know, some of these guys had intentions for at the very beginning. Yeah, for But it's an intention towards...
00:25:09
Speaker
selling you something and sex sells, money sells, all these things. And it's just driving it towards that. So there's a lot of immorality. and I'd be willing to bet that most algorithms start at the listing of the seven deadly sins. Sure.
00:25:23
Speaker
You know greed, pride, lust, all those things. Yeah. yeah That's why in between the pictures of half-dressed girls, I was getting pictures of brand-new Ford pickup trucks all the time. You know, you want a new truck? Do you want a new truck? We kind of brushed over it. I want to kind of go back to it. Sure. The communication. Yeah. We had said, you know, give your your spouse the password and stuff so they could see the messages. Don't even go there.
00:25:44
Speaker
um If we wouldn't have a secret conversation with a woman in personal life against why would we do it on the Internet, right? And so I don't know what your standards are in your household. My wife and I attach...
00:25:56
Speaker
someone else, like if I'm speaking to a woman through a message, my wife is attached to it. If she's speaking to a man, yeah I'm attached to it. And there's been times where I'll like reply to a picture and it goes to messages and then I'll have to back out of it, right? Because there's just a, there's a standard. And so pick what that is in your household and hold that high standard, whatever it whether whether you just be notifying her, hey, I'm going to message this person about this idea.
00:26:20
Speaker
Great. As long as they're involved in the conversation.
Value of In-Person Interactions
00:26:23
Speaker
It's only going to lead to bad things if you continue to have secret conversations. All right. Final question. This is not a trick question. How does iron sharpen iron?
00:26:33
Speaker
Friction. Friction, which means they have to come in contact with each other. Gives it something hard to rub against. It's not something soft. right It's not going to be the thing that ah moves to your wants. Proverbs says, as iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. It's not only a motivation for us to be in community with other brothers and sisters because we need that. It's also a motivation for us to put down the phone and engage people face-to-face, eye-to-eye, to be in church together. you You can't hold people accountable that you're not in in church. That's why we say going to church matters. Yeah,
Listener Engagement and Invitation
00:27:09
Speaker
it really does. church Yeah, I've heard that somewhere before. It's important. Interesting. All right. Thanks for joining us today. Come back. We're going to be continuing. Obviously, there's a lots to talk about here. I feel like we're rushing through these things and and having to skim the surface, but we want to keep digging down deeper. Again, if you've got thoughts, questions, ideas, even tips that you would share as we're going through this over the next several weeks, we we look forward to hearing from those. Click, like, share, follow us, come back and listen and engage us in the conversations.
00:27:38
Speaker
Thankful for our audience continuing to grow a little bit. One person a week, I think. is All right. Yeah, that's good. But we'll look forward to seeing you back here, maybe at Sunday morning at 8, 9, 30, 11 at Grove Hill Church. Have a great week.
00:27:49
Speaker
Bye.